Thursday, April 08, 2010

Thang Long

A very popular Vietnamese restaurant where the chic crowd of Bangkok and tourists love to eat just re-opened after renovations. Everyone was really happy when it re-opened so they can have their favourite Vietnamese dishes again.

The renovation has added a more loungey outdoor dinning area and has transformed the inside dinning room to be more exotic in decor. The ambiance of the restaurant is dark and buzzing with non-stop customers coming in and out. The menu has also been renovated in terms of a new menu design & photos and in terms of new dish selections.

The first dish was steamed raviolis. The raviolis rice wrapping was soft & moist, the pork & mushroom stuffing in the raviolis was tender & juicy. The raviolis were accompanied with steamed pork pate and bean sprouts and topped with deep fried onions. A really lovely dish. So many textures and tastes.

The next dish was goi cuan (fresh spring rolls). The goi cuan rice paper wrapper was soft and tender (I really hate it when its all dried out). The filling of rice noodles, shrimp, pork and vegetables were fresh and well packed.

The next dish was deep fried frogs legs. A new dish on the menu and WOW. Deep fried to a dark brown, the frog legs were so tender & juicy and the taste was out of this world.

The next dish was deep fried fish with lemon grass. This was the only reason why we went to Thang Long. Their signature dish. Our friends (who are from Luxembourg) always insist to go to Thang Long so they can eat this dish. You do not find this dish in many places in Bangkok. This dish is cooked by taking out the fish meat, deep frying the meat and then they use the fish as a bowl and re-fill the fish with the deep fried fish meat. All we can say is that this fried fish with lemon grass is absolutely amazing. So crispy on the outside but moist and tender on the inside.

The next dish was grilled pork with grilled sticky rice. This is a new selection on the menu. The grilled pork tasted wonderful and was very tender & juicy. The deep fried sticky rice was very yummy. They were crunchy on the outside but sticky & moist on the inside. The pork and rice combination was really good.

The next dish was deep fried shitake mushrooms. This is one of the new selections on the menu. They deep fried the shitake mushrooms to a very nice golden brown. The coating wasvery crispy and the shitake inside was soft and moist. A nice textural combination.

The next dish was grilled lemon grass beef on top of rice noodles. The lemon grass grilled beef was very tender and flavourful. A very nice dish.

The next dish was cahn chua soup. This is one of my favourite soups. Thang Long's version was not bad at all. The blend of sour, sweet, tangy and acidity was done very nicely. The soup had lots of tastes and textures from the tomatoes, pineapples & tamarind. Very yummy and a nice way to end our meal.

Overall, all four of us in our gang, agreed that the new menu has improved in terms of selection and tastes. The food seemed better than before. We are not sure if there is a new chef; but what ever it is, it is much better.

Because the place is always so busy, service can be slow and getting the staff's attention can sometimes be difficult. For example, the staff insists to pour our wine; which is fine. But, they keep the wine bottle at the bar, so when we want wine, we always have to get someone's attention to pour the wine. This can take some time. So, we keep telling them to leave the bottle on the table so that we can do it ourselves. We know they are trying to be helpful but in the end we insist to leave the bottle on the table.

Thang Long is really a great place to meet friends for a very good dinner. The atmosphere is always buzzing with energy. The only BIG problem is parking on soi Lang Suan, it practically does not exist on weekends. We highly advise in taking a taxi.